Rodrigo Silvestri

Hi. These are the facts: I am a student. My school gives me 200ft of Kodak B&W 16mm film to do a short. After I film that, I give it to them, they send it to process and telecine it to DVCAM 25fps. I am going to buy 400ft of Fuji (color) 16mm film to shoot a part in chroma key. I am sending it for process myself (to the same place where the school sends it). I talked with a guy of a post production house who confirmed that he will not charge me for doing a scan (Arriscan, I said 2K) of the film. First time he said it would be good to go with an EDL and scan only the selected shots. Second time, (I think because he realised the -small- length of the film), he said to scan it all. I'm editing on a Mac. Final Cut Studio 2 (FCPro, Motion, Color) with a Core 2 Quad 2,4GHz, 4GB of RAM and 1TB+ in total of hard drives. My aim is to have an HD master (not 2K, but I prefer to edit in 2K because we are going to do some zooms in post) of the short movie (not a film master). And these are the doubts: Should I send the color film for a low-res telecine (will need money) to edit offline? How would I find the shots later with the Arriscan? (Any way to make it recognize the frames from an EDL or something similar?) Or should I scan everything (will need disk space), make a low-res copy, edit offline and then go back to the 2K files? (how to do that? Simply change the original file? Relink files?...). I need to do these things: Edit. Do the keying and effects. Make the color film look like the B&W. Motion does not support DPX, and I would prefer to, somehow, do the keying with the best possible quality. So which is the way? I have more doubts, but I'm sleepy. And please, don't question the fact that this is my first 16mm film and "I should take things easier" or "Maybe the school wants you to learn to do the best with only 200ft", etc. I already discussed that on another topic before. I have another excersises which I don't talk about here, that are made to "learn to do a short in one shot with a fixed camera" or "learn to do a short with less than shots", etc. And I already have the authorisation from the school to have the original B&W negative for scanning. So Thank you in advance!! Rodrigo Silvestri

Any way you can give me 1 frame of that (DPX)? I want to try to match a color file (i.e. a 4K DPX from projectred.net) to a B&W file. Those 200ft given by the school must be returned to the school, we cannot cut anything, so I just I talked with the man of the company that would do the scan. He told me to make a transfer first, edit offline, and then go with an EDL so we can scan only the parts that are being used in order to reduce the size of the scan. Does anyone know how to do this? I mean... how to make a useful EDL so it's easier to do the scan? How much space would 10 mins of 2K DPX take? (24fps). Thanks, Rodrigo

I have color-corrected a 6-min DV short film. Don't remember exactly, but was around 30 min of rendering. I know how to use the program but don't know too much about "what" to do. Anyway, in some cases I had to color correct some things filmed with different white balances and different gain settings, and I could. I have a Hackintosh with 4GB of RAM, a Core 2 Quad 2,4GHz processor, 2x250GB (FW and SATA2) HDs and 1x500GB (SATA2). And the HD or 2K footage won't be over 5 min. I don't have any problem to leave my computer rendering for 48 hours, LOL. Is there any reference that I could take to do a test? (B&W 10-bit scans?). I have some 4K DPX files (from http://www.projectred.net/), I think they might serve as the Fuji scan. Thanks, Rodrigo

This topic is somehow a continuation of a previous topic: http://www.cinematography.com/forum2004/in...showtopic=31486 Quickly: I am a studend and will film on Kodak 7222 or 7231 (given by school). I want to buy more film and I can buy more Kodak or buy Fuji instead. Fuji is cheaper here, because they have a discount for students, about 1/3 of what professionals pay. But that discount is only for F-Series (F-125, F-250, F-400, F-500, F-64D, F-250D) and Reala 500D. From Kodak I get just a 10% discount on B&W film. Kodak doesn't sell smaller rolls here, and we'd use less than 200ft. If I buy Fuji, this is not a problem because I'm interested on using more color film later... So, would it be possible to film with both films (not the same scenes) and match them in post? (I'm interested in doing a 1K or 2K scan, and editing in my Mac, where I have Final Cut Pro and Apple Color, so I want to know if I can make them look similar, or if it'll be a very complicated job. I know I'd try to modify the Fuji part to make it look like the B&W film (adding grain, contrast, etc), and not the way back. Thanks, Rodrigo

We know a lot about that... Fortunately I have a great group (one of the bests at the school, not joking, some people even tells us), and all the ideas are first thought for passing the assignment, and then we create over that. In this case, our assignment is to make our first short with film, to expose correctly and to make something nice. Professors recommend us things about the script and make sure that we are going to be able to do it. I hope this man who I talked to decides to allow us to have the film for scanning and/or processing (now I'm not so interested about the process, but yes about the scanning). I have some new questions which I'll post in another topic. Thanks, Rodrigo

We have 2 kinds of excersises... Some of them are like "practical works" and we have a specific task (like to do a short in 1 shot without moving the camera, or do a short with flashbacks and flashforwards, etc), and the others are just to write a good script (using or not the tools that we learnt before). I told the professor of the "main" signature about buying more film and all that, and he had no problem. So I'm sure that it's not because of that. And thanks for the other info! I'll take it into account. Rodrigo

Hi. I am a film student from Argentina. This year, on July, we get from the film school 200ft of Kodak 7231 or 7222 film and a Bolex H16 camera to make a short movie. We have 3 days to do it and give the film back so they process and transfer it (to DVCAM). As the story we are going to shoot is not an easy production, I'd like to buy more film so we can do at least 3 takes of every shot. I'd like, also, to send the film for processing myself, because in the school they let the cans in a shelf until they get a minimum number to send to the lab (that can be weeks). I also want to do a 1K or 2K scan of that film, so I can edit it in a better quality. Today, I called the school to ask about that. The man who answered the phone is an old professor who is very old fashioned. He told me that the film is property of the school and that I don't need to send the film to process because they pay that for us. So I told him about the scan and he said that it wouldn't be worth it because: 1) The quality of those films is too low, even lower than video (MiniDV PAL is what we use here), so I won't get a better thing doing an HD scan. 2) As its quality is lower, the scanner "will not have information to scan", and it will generate a kind of "rain" (like noise) or something similar. 2 more important things to take into account: I am getting a special price from a postproduction house for the scan, it'll not be so expensive. We might be able to film with an Arri 16SR instead of the Bolex. -- So I want your opinion about this... Would "being three weeks in a storey at ~20ºC/70ºF" mean a great loss of quality? Thanks, Rodrigo

Thank you Michael. I remember having used this program in my old eMac, and it worked great. Now I changed the computer and upgraded to Leopard, and I didn't find the calibration tool, so I thought that they had discontinued it. But when you mentioned it, I remember that I installed my system from a custom-made DVD (my original DVD didn't work and I had to change it). Now that I have the original DVD, I could open it and find the app. Worked perfect I think. Thanks again! Rodrigo

(EDIT CLOSED?! My god... strange people... 10 mins after making the post I couldn't edit it!!) Well... I was saying... I made a topic, Creating a good workspace for Color Correction 2, where I want to discuss about Display Calibration... Thanks, Rodrigo

This, in part, comes from the thread Creating a good workspace for Color Correction, where I am discussing about how to get a good white ambient light. This is something I wrote in that thread (please if you have something to say about it, write it in that thread): I'd like to know if I can use this method for Monitor Calibration. I put my camera face to face with the monitor, and check the vectorscope. Then I adjust my monitor basing on that. Is this a good idea or an extremely bad one? Which is the "standard" way of calibrating a display? I searched about it, but found many things that talk about print documents. Which is the way to calibrate the gamma? Thanks, Rodrigo

I'm not -and will not soon be- a professional colorist. I'm just trying to see which is the best way of achieving a good workspace for semiprofessional color correction. What I mean, is that I won't spend lots of money on equipment to have it all perfect, but I am going to do some things that put me near that. I thought a way of calibrating my light, please tell me if it's useful or if it has some flaws. I have a DV camera (Panasonic GS500 3CCD). I can connect it to the computer and view a live vectorscope. So I thought that I can put the camera's balance in Daylight, then turn on my 6500K 80CRI CFL and point the camera to the wall. I get a slight green peak (8% I think), and I use my Lee Filters catalogue to mix filters and see what I need to correct. In this case, a 1/4 Minus Green works OK (need to go and buy it, because the catalogue is too small). I could use this for monitor calibration now, but I think that I should talk about it in another topic, so I made

Tungsten lamps are very susceptible to time and voltage. Their color temperature decreases with use. Also (I don't know if this happens in the US, but I think it does), I live in Argentina, and the voltage here is not always the same. I mean... it should be 220V, but sometimes it's 218 or 225, and that changes the color temperature too. I think that fluorescents don't change the color over time, but their intensity lowers. Thanks again, Rodrigo

In my first post I said that I don't need a high CRI light. CRI is only involved when you want to reproduce colors (like if I want my red jacket to appear with an intense red). That is because CRI means the amount of color peaks that the light has. To generate a pure white, I only need red, green and blue, each one in its exact measures. Michael and Adrian: I already read about monitor calibration... Might make a new thread about that later. Thanks, Rodrigo

Hi. I am an Argentinian film student and, with luck, a future Director of Photography. I am one of those who think that you have to know all the tools first, and to let the creativity do its work. I like to have the whole control of the images of my projects, and now I am starting to learn about color correction. I changed my Mac some months ago, and am getting really used to Final Cut Studio. I started using Color a month ago, doing tests and things like that, which led me to start reading about color grading. Something that I read among all the things, and that called my attention, was that some colorists have a white card with a pure-white light that they can turn on to use as a reference. I am really interested in buying a good 6500ºK light and a white card, but would want to know where to buy it. Some months ago I was studying by myself all about high CRI fluorescent light, and concluded that even a 99CRI light can be greenish, because the CRI doesn't directly mean the color, but the amount of "color ranges" that the light emits. So I know that what I need is a good pure-white light. And I even think that it doesn't need to be high CRI, because I am only interested in reproducing a 6500ºK white with it, and not other colors. Is this correct? Can anyone recommend me a brand or place to look for a light like this? Can LED light be an option? I could use an incandescent light with filters, but I would need to change it often because their color temp. decreases with time. Thank you, Rodrigo